Weeding Vermont!

Yesterday was my most intensive weeding day of the year so far, first 2-3 hours finishing the weeding of KVANN’s bed at Væres Venner community garden followed by 7 hours at Ringve Botanical Garden weeding the Vermont Bed (see below). It was literally covered in an effective ground cover of birch seedlings, much worse for some reason than the New Hampshire Bed which I weeded a week ago: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=18255. This reminded me of the large flock of redpolls (gråsisik) at Ringve during the winter, a sign that it was a birch seed year 😊 and here’s a picture from my blog last winter at Ringve: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/P1080538.jpg

In the previous blog a week ago linked above, I wrote:
“The Allium garden at Ringve has grown well as have the so-called weeds (mostly very young birch trees!). I spent the afternoon weeding and documenting the right hand (easternmost bed)….now known as the New Hampshire bed (I’m told the two beds resemble a map of Vermont and New Hampshire)  (As it looks like the garden will be known as Chicago-hagen due to the fact that the native american name Chicago means onion)!!
This is the link to the last album I made from 31st May: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10156051646095860.1073743203.655215859&type=1&l=cbacd0612e

Brown Cress is Back

BROWN CRESS IS BACK!
I received a tip via permies.com that hybrid brown watercress is again available in Europe!
In my book I wrote (in the piece about watercress):
“There aren’t many cultivars and the most common variety is ‘Dark Green American’. In the past, a naturally occurring hybrid between the two closely related species Nasturtium officinale and N. microphyllum (One-rowed watercress), known as brown cress (as it inherited the brownish winter leaves of N. microphyllum), was cultivated. However, this sterile clone had to be vegetatively propagated and the build-up of viruses led to its demise…….It would be nice if the old hybrid brown cress had been available to the home gardener, but I’ve never seen it offered.”
You can order it from:
https://www.kraeuter-und-duftpflanzen.de/Nach-Verwendung/Essbare-Pflanzen/Salatkraeuter/Braune-Brunnenkresse-Pflanz
Please let us know how you get on!